Part 3 (1/2)
”_Chapeaux bas!_” the Colonel murmured, throwing Jane into the most unlady-like fit of giggles.
”Where did it come from?” Bob asked later. He was riding with her a hundred yards behind the buggy that held the Colonel and Dale, the old rifle sticking out at the back like a bean pole.
”A heaven-sent deliverer,” she quietly answered.
”I appreciate that,” he said, in a more serious vein.
Her very reticence told him how deeply she had been shocked, and that it was a subject to be avoided, for the present, at least. Bob was quick to divine situations. For the moment, then, he drifted into another channel, saying with a laugh that could hardly have been called spontaneous:
”If he's an example of celestial types I'll--”
”Lead a different life?” she interrupted, smiling.
”No such plagiarism, thank you,” he retorted. ”I was about to say something else!”
”You've been giving Bip some most unfatherly theories about that place, by the way,” she observed. ”He has confided in me.”
”Bip,” Bob quietly remarked, with an oozing pride in the subject of his six-year-old son, ”has reached the age of embarra.s.sing questions.”
”And is being fed unpardonable answers,” she said. ”Between old Aunt Timmie's declaration that it'll smell like heliotrope and taste like possum the year 'round, and Uncle Zack swearing it's just a big race track where everybody's horse will win, and doubtless the Colonel's word for it that it's a perpetual spring flowing with ice-cold mint juleps, I quite despair of the child's salvation. How have you been picturing it?”
”I pa.s.sed that on,” he ruefully admitted. ”You and Ann can tackle it.”
”I wasn't home this afternoon at his lesson time. Did he miss me?”
”Miss you! Ann says he went to your room about five o'clock, and then came running to her saying something had happened to you. She was quite a while getting him settled. And then, much shame to us, we realized you'd not got back. I drove over to the Colonel's really expecting you had stopped there.” After a brief pause he asked: ”Was that fellow much unruly? I wouldn't disturb you about it, but think you ought to tell us.”
”About five o'clock,” the girl mused. ”That's most interesting, Bob.
I've told you, haven't I, that the child is tremendously psychic?”
”I don't know just what psychic is,” he laughed. ”It sounds like medicine.” And then repeated his other question: ”Was Tusk much unruly?”
”Oh, no,” she lightly answered. ”Has Mr. McElroy been up in the hills today?”
”There's the laziest chap in clothes,” he declared. ”I don't believe he's done a lick of work since he came--and that's two months ago!
Personally, I don't care. He's bully company, and I'm not rabid for that d.i.n.ky little railroad, anyhow.”
”It'll make all the difference to the mountaineers' future,” she said.
”Quite right,” he agreed, ”and cut through my best pasture.”
”Not your best pasture, surely!”
”My dear Jane, don't you know that when a railroad kills your cow it's always your best cow? Pastures accordingly! Still,” he added with a wry look, ”the people's good comes first, doesn't it! That's the proper motto!” And suddenly he began to laugh. ”Brent and your new friend up there in the buggy ought to be a combination to keep the Colonel amused for awhile! What do you think?”
She, too, had to laugh. The mental picture of the immaculate, devil-may-care Brent McElroy--sent down in behalf of his father's corporation to develop coal fields, to run a line for the little railroad which Bob had just characterized as ”d.i.n.ky,” and otherwise to put into practice college experiences not included in its curriculum--chumming with this new child of nature, threw them again into peals of mirth.
”I wish someone would urge him on faster, anyhow,” she said, more seriously now.
”Why don't you try,” he suggested.